PostgreSQL Tutorial: ASCII Function: Get ASCII code or Unicode Code Point of a Character

Summary: The PostgreSQL ASCII() function returns an ASCII code value of a character. In the case of UTF-8, the ASCII() function returns the Unicode code point of the character.

Table of Contents

Syntax

The following illustrates the syntax of ASCII function:

ASCII(char)

Arguments

The ASCII() function requires one argument:

1) char

The char argument is a character that you want to get the ASCII code.

If you pass a string to the ASCII() function, it will return the ASCII code of the first character.

Return value

The ASCII() function returns an integer that represents the ASCII code value of the input character. In the case of a UTF-8 character, it returns an integer which is corresponding to the Unicode code point.

Examples

The following example uses the ASCII() function to get the ASCII code values of character A and a:

SELECT
    ASCII( 'A' ),
    ASCII( 'a' );

The output is:

If you pass a sequence of characters to the ASCII() function, you will get the ASCII code of the first character as shown in the following example:

SELECT
    ASCII( 'ABC' );

The function returns the ASCII code of the letter A which is 65 as follows:

The following example illustrates how to use the ASCII() function to get the Unicode code point of a UTF-8 character:

 SELECT
    ASCII( 'Ω' );

Remarks

To get character based on ASCII or Unicode code point, you use the CHR() function.

In this tutorial, you have learned how to use the PostgreSQL ASCII() function to get the ASCII code or Unicode code point of a character.

See more

PostgreSQL Tutorial: String Functions

PostgreSQL Documentation: String Functions and Operators